Re: Obscure personal questions.

PC. Gaming-wise I'd say that mods are usually the winning factor for most people, but for me I actually really like the personal nature of building your own system. It's my baby, and I'm proud when it works the way I want, and I take care of it and get it the upgrades it needs to stay current.

Plus you can't really edit video on an Xbox, so.

If you could learn any new, complicated skill/skillset instantly, but had to give up all knowledge on a skill/skillset you'd worked at long and hard in your life, would you, and what would those skills be? If you wouldn't, why not?

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: Obscure personal questions.

Invid wrote:

Name the childhood fantasy you held onto the longest.

So I was a Boy Scout and I'm the youngest of four boys. My older brother David was a bit of a bully, and I was very small and weak. One day, I'm reading BOYS LIFE and in the back of that magazine were the last vestiges of shitty ads geared towards kids who mailed in their allowance. Two ads stuck out: one was a "Build your own Hovercraft out of a Vacuum Cleaner!" and "Home made laser!" Naturally my mind went to the only acceptable place in my imagination: build a hover craft and rain laser death upon my brother from on high. I saved money, and subscribed to Boys Life even after I left the scouts. This was a seriously plan of mine all the way until high school, until I saw a picture of this hovercraft. It was the size of a toy, not a mount upon which I could ride into glorious victory. The laser? Carpentry laser. No better than a cat's toy.

Re: Obscure personal questions.

I'd like to answer Boter's question. It's a bit long but after writing it, I realize that it's some kind of catharsis for a train of thought I've had for the last few months.

Boter wrote:

If you could learn any new, complicated skill/skillset instantly, but had to give up all knowledge on a skill/skillset you'd worked at long and hard in your life, would you, and what would those skills be? If you wouldn't, why not?

Tricky. The skill that comes to my mind instantly is the piano, because that's something I can't imagine not being able to play at some point in my life, and it really feels like the next step for me to become a better musician.

But that would imply giving up a skillset I've worked hard at, which would either be VFX (which is my job, so I won't be giving that up for now) or photography (which is my passion and is to become more and more present in my life). There's also the guitar but giving it up would imply trading an instrument for another which is a no-no because I've always tended to be a Jack of all trades, master of none, and as a result I see myself in the future as a multi-instrumentalist. Boter's question doesn't forbid from learning again, but jeez.

There's nothing I'd really give up. Photography is the most important to me because it's how I want to communicate artistically. But the fact that I never gave up on my guitar and even started playing drums although I've never been in a band or found any other real use for these skills proves that it could also be a way for me to communicate.

In the next few years, I'd like to make movies about nature, and I've come to really like the idea of composing my own soundtrack for them. It would bring all said skills together.

I do need to start composing stuff, though. Which brings the piano to the table again, because it'd be the best medium for it.

tl;dr: I wouldn't, because all skills I have now I couldn't do without. I'll learn stuff the old way.

I don't have a clever question to trade for this one, let's keep Eddie's.

Last edited by Saniss (2016-04-20 15:39:13)

Sébastien FraudFacebook | Twitter | 500px"We're gonna build a great green screen, and make the traditional matte painters pay for it"Saniss for President 2016 - "Make VFX great again"

Re: Obscure personal questions.

First, I must acknowledge the appearance of Dave! Surviving fatherhood alright?

First night out with friends that made you feel older than you were.

Not sure that I will personally ever feel old, but then I've always been mature for my age.

I got married not long after college, none of my friends at that time were even seriously dating anyone. I tried to hang on to the old social connections, but it quickly devolved into having no value for me. At a certain level, and this is probably sexist at the core, a major purpose of the college social life is to hook up and move on. Getting married is one way to shift phases.

Keeping the story short: my college crew were getting back together to hit a club in the city, and all that that implies. My wife was at a weekend continuing education class someplace, leaving me a born again bachelor for the evening. Watching the veritable "Night at the Roxbury" that ensued made me pity my boys, and appreciate my wedded bliss all the more.

Q: Describe the most superlative moment of ass-kissing you've experienced, perpetrated or witnessed.

Re: Obscure personal questions.

Writhyn wrote:

drewjmore wrote:

Describe the most superlative moment of ass-kissing you've experienced, perpetrated or witnessed.

Someone will answer the question!

I completely and utterly beat the living crap of a douche at a bar for not giving up about trying to make me the "nerd" of the party. He was harassing me loudly in front of other people, and trying to bother me with "witty" comments about my passion for lightsabers and star wars in general. When he didn't get me upset, because, how would you, he pushed me. I ignored him and went outside for a smoke. He came and sat on the same bench, opposite the table and started again. I had enough, gave him a fisted high-five to the face, followed up by giving him a nice face plant into said table, provided him with a pretty cozy choke hold, dragged him from the table and knocked him out, all without ever taking any damage, or having anyone trying to tear me away from him. Fucker had it coming a long way.

The bouncer even saluted me.

What's the most tantalizing moment you've experienced in front of a crowd? On a stage, in a classroom, video conference, they all count. The one time you had to hold back your ear-to-ear grin.

Re: Obscure personal questions.

(i refuse to follow the rules of this thread, so I'm returning back to Teague's initial question).

Teague wrote:

What happened with the first person you ever confessed a crush to, or asked out.

2nd grade - I had a crush on this girl named Sara. Walked up to her in the playground at lunch and said "hey, do you want to go steady with me?" To which she replied, "no, you bitch" and promptly walked away with her boyfriend.

Re: Obscure personal questions.

Teague wrote:

What was happening at the moment in your life where (so far) you've been the most sure you were gonna die?

So a few years ago, I'd flown out to Maryland for half a week to visit with my grandparents. Had fun, etc. The night before I left, we ate some leftover Arby's that they'd had for a few days and reheated. Not the best, 'cuz lukewarm Arby's, but it tasted fine and nothing seemed amiss.

The following day, I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight back to Minnesota to open up for boarding, and my stomach is feeling progressively queasier. Finally it gets to the point where I have to ask the guy sitting next to me to watch my luggage (didn't remember at the time that leaving luggage unattended is a total no-no), and ran to the nearest bathroom just in time to throw up rather spectacularly into a toilet.

Well, that sucked, I think, realizing at this point that I most likely have food poisoning from last night's secondhand Arby's, but hopefully it means I'll be fine on the flight back.

So, I get on the plane, feeling pretty much okay. I settle into my seat, ignore the passenger adjacent to me, and go back to reading It, which I have a few hundred pages of left. Plane takes off, we're in the air for a while, everything seems like it's gonna work out.

Then we get the warning that we're gonna hit some turbulence. I don't think too much of it—I've had that happen before on flights and it wasn't particularly anything to write home about. But when we do hit said turbulence, my stomach starts acting up again.

I realize that we can't get out of our seats with the turbulence happening, and I really don't want to vomit into a paper bag with someone sitting next to me, so I'm fairly anxious right now. And that anxiety spikes by a huge margin when all of a sudden I realize I'm not breathing particularly well.

On top of that, I can't even fucking open my mouth—my jaw is clenched shut. And my hands have formed these clutching claw-like shapes and I can't pull my fingers back to normal.

So here I am, not breathing and holding my claw-hands up like a demon-possessed person and struggling to make noise from between my clenched jaws. The guy next to me doesn't seem to notice that much is wrong, and I'm getting more and more panicked. Finally, the woman across the aisle from us notices that I'm in a fair amount of distress and asks what's wrong.

Turns out she's a doctor, and after a few minutes of calm instruction on her part, I'm able to unclench my mouth and my hands and can breathe fairly easily. Which is good, because at that moment I finally throw up again. The latter happens a couple more times over the rest of the flight.

What basically happened as far as I can tell from what was explained to me upon landing is that my anxiety about the turbulence's causing me to throw up led me to unconsciously hyperventilate, which isn't a great thing for the human body what with the weird air pressure things that happen on a plane. This hyperventilation led to my not being able to breathe very well, and somehow (I wasn't paying much attention to the details in the moment) caused my motor functions to lock up and my jaw to not move. Had Oblivious Seatmate continued to ignore me and had Serendipitous Doctor not looked up at the right time (or been on the flight in the first place), I very well could have thrown up while in this panicked semi-paralyzed state and choked on my own vomit.

So yep. Fun times were had by all. Food poisoning was gone by the end of the next day, though.

Who is a person who you used to admire a great deal and now unabashedly loathe?